Tuesday, October 2, 2007

DQB and HUC5

I love lucksacking when I'm "trying out" the 5-10NL table. It's no presto but 66 has been good to me. Not quite the largest pot I've won but close. Dem Quads Bitches!!!

Alright, so on to the main topic for today. I haven't really mentioned much in my past posts but over the course of what feels like the past few months, I've been a part of this Heads Up Challenge 5. Now, admittedly, Fuel had to twist my arm a little to enter because I wasn't too comfortable with my heads up game so I kinda thought it would just be a waste of money. Nonetheless, after some coaxing and trash talking from him, I decided that I'll enter and see how it goes. Surprisingly, I won all three of my matches so far in a complete sweep and so I'm currently 7-0... 3 more wins for me to take the title. Along the way, I beat a former HUC champion (HUC 3), WillWonka and in the Final 4, I beat Matt in the best of 5 series to advance to the Finals... against none other than lucko himself. Now for those of you that don't know... Lucko's blog was one of the first blogs I've read. I'm not even sure how I found his blog because until I started blogging one day, I wasn't even a reader of blogs. I guess maybe I did a random search or something and found his. Nonetheless, from the moment I saw his blog, I kinda became a fan... and by kinda, I mean totally. And I actually learned a lot from the things he mentioned in his blog. So, to say that taking this title by defeating Lucko would be sweet is an understatement. When I first entered this challenge, I didn't really care... I wanted to keep it respectable and advance to the second round or something but I didn't think I'd make it this far. Now that I have, I want the title sooooo bad... Yes, Fuel, so I can be like you, as you so cleverly pointed out in your email yesterday. See the bracket below to see my road to the Final.

Now so far, I didn't really post anything about this challenge because I didn't have much to say... or rather, I didn't have much that I wanted to share with my readers. Especially because I knew that some of my potential opponents read my blog, I didn't want to tip off anything. I don't think Lucko really reads my blog (he might occasionally stop by but that's about it) and I don't think anything I share here is gonna give him any advantage since he probably already knows this stuff.

So, I will say one thing to any of my former opponents who read this... I have one confession to make. I lied to you guys. I wasn't quite the cardrack that I told you I was. Did I get good cards and timely cards? Definitely. But I didn't have good cards every time I raised. And I think I raised often. And by often, I mean 99% of the time. I was gonna do that until I got pushed back and no one so far has pushed back at me. I also did switch gears every now and then so that I didn't become predictable. So I would sometimes call down with top pair and win at showdown, I'd bet top pair at other times, etc. But even in between matches, I'd tell them how sick of a run of cards I was getting... I wanted to give them the image that I was actually catching cards so that my frequent raises would be moderately respected. And that's all I needed. I didn't need them to totally believe me but as long as that was in their heads, I felt that my mission was accomplished. Am I a jerk for lying? Hell no. This is poker. Friends away from the table, war on the felt. Right?

And btw, I'm not in any way indicating that it was easy for me to win. Don't get me wrong. Again, getting timely cards and also being able to hit the flop and avoid bad beats in a close race-type situations (even a 60-40 or 65-35) was key to me winning. So don't take this is a "I actually schooled you but I was being nice about it" type of way. This is not, in any way, intended to come out that way.

I'm pretty sure Lucko will give me a hell of a game and I look forward to it. I think our showdown is tentatively scheduled for Thursday. God, I really hope my Friday post is something along the lines of "I'm the HUC5 Champion!!!" or "Move over Fuel, here comes the new champ" or something along those lines. Oh well, if not, back to the drawing board for HUC6.

Lucko, if you are reading this, just remember that every time I raise, I have AA. Just FYI.